technology
Pinterest CEO Says Platform Runs Over 80 Billion Searches a Month, Mostly Commercial and Visual
Bill Ready said the platform processes over 80 billion searches monthly during an interview at the Cannes Lions festival. More than half are commercial, and the company has quadrupled ad revenue growth since 2022.
Audio version
Tap play to generate a narrated version.
Developing·Limited corroboration so far. This page will refresh as more sources emerge.
Pinterest CEO Bill Ready described the platform's visual search capabilities and AI advertising features during an onstage interview at the Cannes Lions festival. Business Insider reported that Ready, who became CEO in 2022 after joining from Google, told editor-in-chief Jamie Heller that Pinterest records more than 80 billion searches per month.
More than half of those searches are commercial, he said, and they are primarily visual.
The company has over 630 million users, with more than half belonging to Gen Z. Ready spoke at Business Insider's annual CMO Insider Breakfast, an event supported by founding sponsor BCG along with PayPal and LinkedIn. Ready said Pinterest launched Pinterest Performance+ in 2024 to let advertisers target audiences through visual signals drawn from content.
The platform also supplies generative AI tools that convert products into stylized images for advertisements. He added that Pinterest quadrupled the growth rate of its advertising revenue under his leadership. The company trains open-source AI models on its proprietary data to produce user recommendations.
In 2025 Pinterest introduced tools that allow users to limit the amount of AI-generated content appearing in their feeds. Ready noted that users are still determining their preferences during this transition period.
